GOSSIP THE AFFINITY OF RACES. 311 



Atlantis may Lave been the scene of man's creation. The climate, 

 the rich productions, the mineral wealth, the volcanic strata of 

 these beautiful islands, favour the conclusion. 



Here may have been the region where God planted a garden, 

 and placed Adam, and then Eve, to keep it, and where they roam- 

 ed naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. In this 

 delightful country we may draw upon imagination, without fear of 

 satiety, for a picture of the lost Paradise, and the fiery obstructions 

 to its ever being regained. Beyond it, in the genial climate and 

 fertile soil, we can look upon Adam, in the sweat of his brow, till- 

 ing the ground from whence he was taken, and which God had 

 cursed. Soon thereafter, Cain, the first murderer and emigrant, 

 and his brother Abel, come upon the scene. We find the first born 

 bringing his presumptuous oiFering of the fruits of the ground, not 

 as an acknowledgment of Divine mercy in still permitting it to 

 maintain the human family, but as an earnest that it yet bare some- 

 thing in that propitious clime, more akin to the products of Eden 

 than ** thorns and thistles" — an offering, in the spirit in which it 

 was made, to which the Lord had not respect. We can judge of 

 what his remorse must have been after the fatal act that brought 

 death into the world, and made him a fugitive and a vagabond on 

 the earth, and can hope for him that in after life he received conso- 

 lation from the Divine declaration * * If thou doest well shalt thou 

 not be accepted." Ages roll on, mankind multiply exceedingly, 

 the longevity is remarkable, although we know nothing of the mea- 

 sure of time in the antediluvian age. The tree of knowledge bears 

 its fruit in the human mind ; art and science progress. Iniquity 

 also abounds although it had not yet culminated. Men worshipped 

 the true God and called upon his name. Polygamy prevailed as in 

 later ages. We find Lamech with his wives Adah and Zillah, 

 endowed with superior talents, coupled with a certain ferocity of 

 disposition characteristic of the period, showing even then the inse- 

 curity of human life. Lamech who had slain a man by whom he 

 had been wounded, and a young man from whom he had received a 

 hurt, — probably not innocent blood as was that of Abel — deprecat- 

 ing revenge, or claiming exemption from retributive justice, on the 

 plea which preserved his great ancestor — ''If Cain shall be avenged 



